How to Turn Negative into Positive When You Have a Bad Day

We have been talking about how to turn negative thoughts into positive ones, but it isn’t always as easy as just putting a positive spin on it. Sometimes, you are just having a terrible day and are completely consumed by one derailment after another. These are the days when you need to think a little out of the box if you still want to be a positive person who thinks optimistically about everything in life.

Here are some tips for reframing those negative thoughts into positive ones, even when it seems like everything is going wrong.

Why Bother?

You might be wondering why you should even bother reframing your negative thoughts? Technically, you don’t need to, but it can help to maintain a positive attitude as you go through life. It is not what happens to you that defines you, but how you deal with it. Repeat after me, “it is not what happens to you that defines you, but how you deal with it”.

Everyone has things that go wrong or unexpected in their life, but not everyone has a negative attitude about it. Why? Because some people have learned how to cope with the bad things and somehow turn them into good things, even if they are just putting a positive spin on something that had really unfortunate timing.

Write Everything Down

If you are a little overwhelmed by all the negative things happening on a particularly bad day, just take a step back, take a breath, and write it down. Get out your journal and detail everything that has happened. Describe in detail why you are having a bad day, what has happened or gone wrong, and what you have done about it.

In some cases, you find positives just by writing it all down. In others, you just feel a little lighter having vented through journaling. And in other situations, you might find that you didn’t have the best response to something, and you were actually the reason it went bad. This intention is a really important lesson to learn moving forward.

There is (Almost) Always a Positive Spin

This might not be true for all bad things in your life, but there is usually a positive spin you can put on most situations. It might be that you made a mistake, learned from it, and will try harder not to make it in the future. Or the positive spin is just that the bad or embarrassing moment is over, and now you don’t have to relive it.

In other situations, maybe you had to go somewhere new because the place you usually visit was closed, and while this put you in a sour mood, you met someone new at this new place. Cherish and appreciate these unexpected moments, because they really provide you with a lot more positivity.